Marksman (Promotion)
The Marksman / Guardsman mechanic is very interesting. The two promotions are available to combat units heavily promoted, Combat IV. Marksman gives the ability to target the weakest unit in the stack. This is a perfect counter to Mages and Archmages, that often are physically the weakest units, but also the most dangerous. Guardsman promotions simply negates the effect of Marksman. It is important to defend the advanced arcane units with some Guardsman, because a large stack or a well defended city will offer no protection aganist Assassins and Shadows. }} |} Marksman All Assassin units get Maksman promotion for free. When your enemy has powerful Mages or Archmages, Assassin are the perfect counter. They may be built in stack, and the AI with More Naval AI will often present a 10 stack of assassin ready to deal with your Arcane Units. Assassin will attack at 5 +1 Poison = 6 and will be powerless against most units, and more so as the game advances, because they lack Metal promotions. The natural target of Marksman are: * Adept: 3 * Amurites' Wizard: 4 * Mage and Archmage: 5 Also disciple units may be targeted, but they are much stronger: * Disciple: 3 link=https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/File:Strength.gif * Priest: about 5 link=https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/File:Strength.gif (exact value depends on relgion) * High Priest: about 8 link=https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/File:Strength.gif (exact value depends on relgion) Some common units may be used to deceive Assassin, as they are weaker than Mages; * Warrior: 3 * Tiger: 4 Assassin and still more Shadows may be sent on deep undercover mission behind enemy lines to deal with Mages protected by walls, but they will be heavily exposed. Also the Invisibility of the Shadwos will not give much protection, a simple cheap Hawk will negate it. You may still send some assassin in risky mission: they are cheap units. But keep a score of them in your main stack, defending or attacking. A 10 stack of assassin in your stack will devastate your counterpart Mages in 1 or 2 turns. Guardsman enemy units will prevent the assassinations, but they will eventually be wounded and pulped down. Assassin, Chanter, Devout are all fine. Shadows are better, and they are very simple to build, because the Esus religion will not need to be your state Religion. Courtesan and Angel of Death are fine. Capped units with Marksman like Assasin Heroes (Alazkan the Assassin or Aeron's Chosen ) or the Marksman unit (national unit) will be less efficient because often Assassin need to be used in swarm attacks, in numbers, and to be easily scarified. Guardsman: the counter to Marksman Guardsman is a Promotion available to any Combat IV Melee unit. It specifically negates the abilities of Marksmen, and in general double Strength when selecting Defender for Stack. It is quite simple to achieve, even in the early game: a simple Warrior with a bit of barbarian experience may get it at Level 5. Guardsman units: * Any melee unit with Combat IV promotion may be promoted to Guardsman. Also warriors may be promoted. Champion or Stygian Guard make for good, cheap Guardsman. A fully upgraded Champion with Mithril Weapons will defend at 6 +4 Mithril = 10. * Bannor melee units gets Guardsman for free. * Royal Guard, available with Aristocracy civics, gets Guardsman for free. They are on their own a good reason to stick to Aristocracy. Given the lack of quick alternative, in case of emergency (swarm of Shadows that harass your Archmages) it may be advisable to promptly switch to Aristocracy and rush a pair of Royal Guards, that with their high mobility may quickly reach the assigned mages to protect. They are 4/8 units able to use Mithril Weapons, so they max at 8 +4 Mithril = 12 in defense, and they unusually levels pretty fast because they go from battle to battle and they tends to win. * Warrior has special upgrade rules that allow upgrading to Archery or Recon line. So it is possibile to raise an early promoted Warrior to Guardsman and promote him to Longbowman or Crossbowman to have a perfect defender. An Archery unit with a lot of First Strike is a perfect counter to swarm of assassin that may pose a problem to ordinary bodyguard. * A good counter to assassins that does not involves guardsman is to accompany your mages with a lot of weaker units, like unpromoted warriors, skeletons, summoned tigers. Archers and arquebus don't get guardsman promotion. Archery units will get First Strike promotion for their ability to strike from afar, but the Guardsman promotion is a different thing. A guardsman is more similar to a "bodyguard" that will protect your Archmages and High Priests at all time, also by a nighttime poisoned blade wielded by some invisible Shadow. The Guardsman will be often chosen to protect your entire stack (double Strength when selecting Defender for Stack). This is something of a contradiction to the unit specialization as a Bodyguard to weak units. With large stack of doom that face each other on field, there are plenty of units, including cheap summons, that shoud be used to Defend the Stack during harsh battle: otherwise the Guardsman will be too tired and wounded to make his job. Enemy Marksman units will pose a real threat with 11 , but they are unable to use Mithril weapons, so they are on par with the defending Champion. Other elite units are unable to act as Guardsman with exception of Phalanx, that are kind of wasted for the task, and should specialized in taking Citiyes. Longbowmen and Crossbows are not suitable, as strange as it may be. The main problem is that it requires a 4 star unit. Your enemy may mass produce cheap Assassin, while to defend you need to use elite Melee units. It would be useful to have a low level, mass producing Guardsman unit. Strategy Let's make some example. An attacker waits to build a large stack of doom with a lot of promoted mages. He sports 4 Archmages and 8 firemages (Mages specialized in Fireballs, with Fire II, Spell Extension and Combat II / Combat V). He also has the support of 5 Adepts ready to cast useful support spells like Haste and Enchanted Blade and Summon Skeleton. He has also a precious single Dispel Mage, a Mage with Metamagic II able to cast Dispel Magic before each combat so to negate positive buff to enemy troops. He has chosen to forget catapults and Lich: he wants a quick moving Army, suitable to receive Haste, and units that are not alive are unable to be hasted. He has completely neglected also the Recon Line: some Metamagic I adepts will provide situation awareness with their Wizard Eyes, so no Hawks or Hunters. He will rely on Fireballs to take down city defenses and soften targets, on Archmages Fire Elementals to act as tank units, and on cheap melee units to finish the job. A pair of disciple units will provide healing and some Archers will defend the new conquests. He start the attack and begins the march in the enemy lands. The first enemy city is easily taken as usual: the enemy has still to mobilitate. But during the march to the second city, still afar from the walls, while the Mages are sending fireballs flying to the city defences, all Adepts simply disappears. Also 2 Mages are taken down. It seems that the enemy, a rude, retrograde guy with almost no magic support, had a stack of 10 Assassin on his roster. Next move, the mighty stack of doom moves under the enemy City, and the 6 remaining firemages dispose of the remaining walls. Too bad all the adepts are gone, and nobody is able to cast Haste: only the Archmages'summons are able to attack, and 1 enemy Longbowman is taken down. The city defenders should be no match: 3 remaining Longbowman, 2 dangerous Beastmasters, some Hunters with their penalty while inside city walls, and a bunch of lesser units. But the 10 assasins take their toll: from the City they slaughter almost all the arcane line in the sieging army! Only a single Archmage survive the attack, killing his killers. But he has no hop of survive for long. The attacking stack of doom is doomed. Without magic support there is no hope to overcome the Longbowmen of the walls. The fierce enemy beastmasters begins slowly slaughtering the attacking army. One of the attacking Champion is Combat IV: during the skirmish below the walls he get the much needed level up and is promoted to Guardsman, and pose himself as personal bodyguard of the remaining single Archmage. But when 9 Assassins comes knocking at his door, he is simply outnumbered, and all hope is lost. The attacker will try again after some 100 turns a new wave, with a new stack of doom. A long long time was needed to gain 4 new Archmages. But in this period of peace, with no barbarian left, it proved impossible to raise some Lvl5 Champions as Guardsmen. As a counter of sort to Assassin attacks, some defensive Assassins are build, ready to attack the enemy stack of Assassins, in the hope that the weakest units will prove to be them. In the meantime the defender had time to build hordes of Shadows. Any city with the Council of Esus Region may build Shadows, with no other buildings as prerequisite and the free Marksman promotion ready to use. Category:Promotions